The Kroger Co: Sustainable Packaging Policies for Plastics

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WHEREAS:  The growing plastic pollution crisis poses increasing risks to Kroger. Corporations could face an annual financial risk of approximately $100 billion should governments require them to cover the waste management costs of the packaging they produce.[1] New laws to this effect were recently passed in Maine, Oregon, Colorado, and California,[2] while the European Union has enacted a $1 per kilogram tax on all non-recycled plastic packaging waste.[3]

Pew Charitable Trusts released a groundbreaking study, Breaking the Plastic Wave (“Pew Report”), concluding that improved recycling is insufficient and at least one-third of overall plastic use must be eliminated to stem the global plastic pollution crisis. It finds that plastic use reduction is the most viable solution from environmental, economic, and social perspectives. Without immediate and sustained new commitments, annual flows of plastics into oceans could nearly triple by 2040.[4]

Kroger has fallen behind its peers in plastic packaging reductions. Kroger is notably absent from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Global Commitment to reduce plastic pollution, in which brand signatories have committed to reduce virgin plastic use by an average of 20% by 2025.[5] The majority of signatories have already reduced their use of plastic packaging over a 2018 baseline.[6]

Unilever has taken the most significant action to date, agreeing to cut virgin plastic use by 50% by 2025, including an absolute elimination of 100,000 tons of plastic packaging. At least sixty other consumer goods and retail companies currently have goals to reduce use of virgin plastic packaging, including competitors Walmart and Target.[7] Kroger has no plastic reduction goal.

Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi are leading the industry in reducing disposable packaging, each having set new goals to expand use of zero-waste reusable packaging. As a retail partner of the global reuse platform Loop, Kroger is poised to increase use of reusable packaging, yet has made no commitment to make reusable packaging permanent.

Our company could avoid regulatory, environmental, and competitive risks, and keep up with its peers by, for example, setting new commitments to reduce use of disposable virgin plastic and invest in reusable packaging.

BE IT RESOLVED:  Shareholders request that the Kroger Board issue a report, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary information, describing how the Company could reduce its plastics use in alignment with the one-third reduction findings of the Pew Report, or other authoritative sources, to reduce its contribution to ocean plastics pollution.  

SUPPORTING STATEMENT:  The report should, at Board discretion:

  •    Assess the reputational, financial, and operational risks associated with continuing to use substantial amounts of single-use plastic packaging while plastic pollution grows;

  •    Evaluate dramatically reducing the amount of plastic used in our packaging through transitioning to reusables; and

  •    Describe how the Company can further reduce single-use packaging, including any planned reduction strategies or goals, materials redesign, substitution, or reductions in use of virgin plastic.

Resolution Details

Company: The Kroger Co

Lead Filers:
As You Sow

Year: 2023

Filing Date: 
December 2022

Initiative(s): Circular Economy

Status: 31.8% Vote

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Proxy Memo

Circular EconomyAs You Sowplastic packaging, Consumer Packaging, Kroger